


Rune-Child

by sicklyscribe



Series: Mikaelson AUs [1]
Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Everybody Lives, Gen, Hope doesn't go to the boarding school in VA, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, and destroyed entirely in s4, assume in this canon that the Hollow was both cooler, teenage insecurity & identity crises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:39:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sicklyscribe/pseuds/sicklyscribe
Summary: Hope Mikaelson's 15th birthday in New Orleans, surrounded by her adoring, terrifying family.An AU





	Rune-Child

**Author's Note:**

> *pushes s4/s5 canon away* i don't want this

It was impossible to surprise anyone in this house without turning to the magical arts. Elijah must have turned on the blender as soon as she stretched herself awake five minutes ago, because there he was, pouring a strawberry-banana smoothie into a milkshake glass. He looked over his shoulder for a moment and smiled. “Happy birthday, Hope.”

Hope yawned and smiled, though the latter was a bit forced, as she sat down at the kitchen table. Elijah grabbed chocolate syrup from the fridge, drizzling it over the smoothie like it was gourmet (she was the only one she knew who drank strawberry-banana smoothies with Hershey’s syrup, but she was also the only vampire-witch-werewolf twice-over New Orleans princess she knew, so.)

“Where’s Dad?” she asked as he stabbed a straw into the drink and brought it over to her with a plate of warm beignets. 

Elijah pursed his lips, fighting some sort of revelation that could be found if he did not restrain his expression. “He’s getting your surprise.” 

His brows rose after a moment, prompting her to  _eat, little one._  She took a bite of beignet and a sip of smoothie (he always made it with so much sugar, Hayley and Aunt Freya always scolded him) and didn’t even try to pry the surprise’s details out of him. Her uncle leaned up against the counter, sipping a giant cup of coffee. He was already in full Elijah-mode, hair coiffed and slacks pressed and tie tied, though his sleeves had been carefully rolled up while he prepared the birthday girl’s breakfast. 

He watched her with eagle eyes, and she tried to avoid the sincere concern in his gaze. Eventually he put the mug down; unrolled his sleeves, clicked the cufflinks back into place. Air chugged and sputtered through the smoothie straw in the awkward silence. He looked away from her, giving her a reprieve, she thought, except he spoke. Gently, almost a whisper. “You don’t have to go tonight if you don’t want to.”

The newly-fifteen-year-old shrugged into herself, picking at the last corner of beignet on her plate. “It’s a tradition.” She put her feet up on the chair and leaned into her knees. “It’s important to Mom.” 

Her uncle gave her a sweet, sad smile before looking back at the counter again. “You’re more important to your mother than any tradition, Hope Andrea Mikaelson.” 

She sighed. “ _Mikaelson_. So many of them hate me, Elijah. Because of dad. And you, and… everything.” She thought about a forest a few hundred miles northeast, ten hundred years in the past, when an uncle she never met died and a grandmother that tried to kill her in the cradle cursed her children with a lust for blood. “Mom always says they don’t matter, that they’ll get used to it…” 

“She’s right.” 

“But-”

“You listen here, sweetheart, there’s no buts about it.” He looked over at her halfway through his sentence, with a steely cold adoration that could only make sense on her uncle’s face. “You will never meet other’s expectations of who you should be. Because there has never been anyone in the world like you, there has never once and never will be someone that could compare.” He cracked a wide, proud smile. “People will hate you for that, and blame it on the vampire in you. Others will blame your grandmother’s blood, others still will blame your mother’s. What is it they say now –  _screw them_. Every fifteen-year-old deserves a happy birthday, especially when that fifteen-year-old is my niece.” 

He had walked over to the table as he spoke, and she could smell his sharp aftershave as he gave her a kiss on the crown of her head. “You want to watch old movies with your uncle tonight, or invite your friends over to do God knows what kind of teenage witchy mischief, your mother will understand.” 

Hope knew that he was right, that she would understand, but she would be sad, too. 

The faint sound of a door clicking open from the courtyard was followed by a split-second of whooshing air before a gorgeous blonde stood outside the kitchen doorframe. “Where is my  _niece!”_ she shouted with a laugh, designer sunglasses threatening to fall from where they were tucked up on her head. The following moments for Hope were all jingling bracelets, fancy perfume, and a soft, not-quite-physically-warm but very emotionally-warm hug. 

“Look at you! Elijah, look at this beautiful little woman! Can you believe she’s Nik’s?” 

“Very funny, Bekah,” her father wrapped an arm around their embrace. “Happy birthday, my littlest wolf.”

“Thank you, dad,” Hope really smiled for the first time that morning, giving him a tight hug. 

Uncle Elijah and Aunt Rebekah detangled from their own greeting, Elijah making some comment or other about Rebekah’s new hair cut. “Just because you choose one cut per century doesn’t mean we all must, big brother.” 

“ _Is no one going to help me with all of these bloody suitcases?”_

Hope gasped, quickly catching the cheshire-cat grins of the others in the kitchen as they watched her realize that there was more to the surprise. She bolted to the front courtyard and into her other uncle’s arms, making him drop the Coach duffels and Santa-esque bag of what had to be presents for her. 

The two laughed and her Uncle Kol kissed her cheeks. “You better be happy to see me. I had to survive a whole eight-hour flight with your Auntie just to get here.” 

“ _I heard that!”_

 _“_ How long can you stay?” she asked, grabbing one of the suitcases and rolling it to the staircase. 

“As long as Nik and your dear wolfy mother can stand to have me, I suppose,” he said with a wink. 

 _As long as the Quarter can stand having all of the living Mikaelsons in one place_ , the pessimist in her translated with a frown. There was too much blood in this compound, too much blood in the name. They tried not to talk about it, but Hayley had made them promise never to lie to her. Recently the vague, sparing answers had become more detailed. Aunt Freya had somberly given her old accounts, a history that never made it into a human’s textbook.

Hope never quite got used to the way her dad’s family looked at her, like she was some Messiah, like she could do no wrong. She knew it had spoiled her, she knew it had made her act out. She knew she could never understand what it would be like to live a thousand years of violence without ever dreaming that a new generation could ever exist. And they could hardly remember what it was like to be human, much less a teenage one. 

Not long after the newcomers were settled and Hope had been absolutely interrogated about her friends and hobbies and everything under the sun and moon, Hayley Marshall came home from the Bayou. 

“Make way, I have cake!” she called throughout the compound. “Where’s my baby!” 

“We don’t have a baby anymore,” Her father cried out mournfully from the couch. “Only a mischievous young lady who is far too good for the lot of us!”

“Speak for yourself, Nik,” (Aunt Freya had come to visit with her new wife not a half an hour before.)

Hope had made her way down the stairs from the living room at this point, meeting her mother in the courtyard and giving her a sheepish smile. 

“Come here, little moon,” the hybrid woman said, gathering her in her strong arms and tucking her head against her shoulder. “Happy birthday, baby.” 

They all went out to lunch after that, because Hayley was adamant that Hope should have a dinner out with her Quarter friends before being trucked down to the swamp, no matter how fun the party was going to be. 

They each gave her one gift (the rest would be at the Bayou, they said, in case she thought they would each only get her a single gift). 

Among them was a handmade leather-bound tome, with a card in the wrappings from Freya. She didn’t understand why Freya had tears in her eyes as she had handed her the gift, she had only felt the rush of excitement to see a new spellbook, gasping and leafing through the – empty pages.

For a moment she sat at the table in the fancy French Quarter restaurant dumbstruck, mouth hanging open and tears filling her own eyes. 

“I figured it was time,” Freya said, trying not to let tears creep into her voice. 

Her own grimoire. 

Hope closed the book now, to run her fingers over the exquisitely wrought leather on the cover. Her heart nearly stopped when she realized what it depicted.

“Your father helped me design it,” Freya whispered, but her voice seemed fuzzy and far-away. 

In the glyphs of her grandfather’s tribe, Hope read the symbol for witch, large and central amidst the nordic knots snaking throughout the leather. 

Inside the central symbol, right at the heart where two filled circles usually sat, was the symbol for Hybrid. In the uppermost circle, the rune for H was embossed. In the Vampire symbol, the A, and in the werewolf, the M. Her fingers shook as she traced the indents of the lines, and her mother’s hand covered her own, grasped it lightly. 

Suddenly it all seemed right. Her parents met because her father lived a thousand years as a vampire, which could not have happened if her grandmother had not been a powerful enough witch to make him so. She was born because of the living werewolf blood in each of her parents, she was alive because she was all three. 

And that wasn’t a bad thing. 

She was all her own, and she was proud of it for the very first time, looking down at the symbol her father had etched, no doubt, to give her a place in the history that had given her to him.

There wasn’t a word for what she was, not in English, not in a modern tongue. But now there was a title, even if it existed only as an image from an ancient culture. 

She would go to the celebration tonight, the celebration for a Crescent princess, and she would dance her ass off and Mary would let her have more whiskey than the shot her mother had promised her. And no one could tell her she didn’t belong. 

_Screw them._

__

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://sicklyscribe.tumblr.com/post/175161344021/an-au-it-was-impossible-to-surprise-anyone-in-this).


End file.
